Beauty, Mercy, Justice

New Seeds

I don’t get to listen to Al Kresta, the EWTN talk show host, much anymore. The local Catholic radio station goes off the air at sunset, and that occurs very early this time of year in this latitude. But tonight I got off work earlier than I have been lately and I heard a little bit of his show.

I had been curious about his take on Evangelii Gaudium. I tuned in as he was talking to someone whose name I did not catch. The guy was saying that while he granted that the free market is the best way to insure widespread prosperity, he had to admit that sometimes there were negative effects from the market on the poor, and surely we can find ways to mitigate them.

Mr Kresta agreed, and said “We always hear about the creative destruction that capitalism brings, but maybe we should strive to find ways to make it less, well, destructive.”

I guess we should be grateful that this sort of Catholic is at long last admitting that the market is something less than a magic transformer of everything it touches, uplifting all in its wake, that it in fact has negative effects.

But really, when Pope Francis says, starkly, that “the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root”, isn’t a more radical critique required?

It is insufficient to water and prune and trim the leaves, or even graft a limb onto a tree with rotten roots.

I think we need to maintain hope. In the exhortation Pope Francis seems to talk a lot about how the fruit of evangelization is slow, how people change and are transformed slowly. how it takes time. Take heart. We should not expect immediate results, but I do believe there is hope for a slow transformation as people’s hearts are opened to the fact that Christ must transform EVERY aspect of our lives. (Including economic markets.)

Have always flown under the IRS radar… living hand to mouth… so my social security payments, for which I now qualify at the age of 66, will hardly pay for groceries. But God is gracious, and our needs have always been met in sometimes “miraculous” ways. Am awaiting a small unexpected inheritance from a man I never met, but corresponded with over our respective lifetimes. My husband is advocating investing it, and the temptation to make the money “grow” is present, but at what cost to those poorer than us? Would we be the beneficiaries of oil, chemical, weapons, etc. profits? It’s easy to rationalize becoming a little cog in the corporate machine in the attempt to be “practical,” “responsible…” “just one person can’t really change the way things are.” But Francis’ exhortation is nudging us…. Love casts out fear… our consciences should rightly be hurt by profiting from someone else’s suffering… and it has been an exhilarating and joyful ride to trust God and put our lives in his hands. After a discussion of our viewpoints on this, my husband caught the bus and read another chapter of “The Idiot,” on his way to work…. amazingly a chapter where a great heap of rubles are thrown into a fire, a revolutionary act. Whatever the motives of the character who did it… it is a shocking thing to do, and illustrates the the idolatrous attachment we have to something of no lasting value. So… thank you Papa Francesco for your words at this time.

Since we’re talking about being radical and uprooting unjust systems, would the old Wobbly goal of abolishing the wage system be consistent with Catholic social thought? Why not work to make every worker an owner and every owner a worker, and eliminate a distinctive capitalist class?

Turns out Mr Kresta had Sam “Tea Party Catholic” Gregg on the air on December 2: http://blog.acton.org/archives/63363-audio-samuel-gregg-discusses-evangelii-gaudium-kresta-afternoon.html At 4:04 we begin the spin, about how what the pope is talking about is some sort of Argentinean projection, or some sort of fantasy. They wring their hands and wonder what on earth he could mean, as if “the socioeconomic system is unjust at its roots” is somehow an ambiguous statement. They hope, piously, that he will be more specific. To which I can only reply “Hold onto your hats.”